Emberlin's Watermarks, Fardon's Clocks, Silverware Given by William

Emberlin's watermarks, Fardon's clocks, silverware given by William Risley and a cache of copies of the NOM7' (mentioned in the Turner volume in 1933) are part of that list. Now we know that the farmer at Church Farm, Steeple Barton, offered a mortgage to the mill and fmally foreclosed and sold to Zachary Stilgoe in 1867 precisely. Perhaps we will never know whether the paper was used by local presses, but we also know the name of at least 34 Deddingtonians associated with the industry: added to the group of axletree workers and Franklin's woodworkers, this is quite an industrial base. The long period of silence, from about 1900 to 1976, after the ending of the Parish Magazine with which Charles Hobday was associated, is interpreted as a period of diminished community, from which the efforts of the Deddington News pioneers have rescued us, save that "we" are not the same, either in our religious environment or our occupations, as the Deddingtonians of the nineteenth century. Technology has changed all that, but widened horizons. However, despite the wider world of the Drakes publications and the presence of Philip Allan, the Worton influence is still here: Simon & Schuster conjures up memories of Sir George, the county councillor, just as Hiron's printed sermons reflected the Wilsons of Worton. Brian Carter considers Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, the "most distinguished" of the family, though I note that Nigel Barley, in White Rajah, considers him "huge, fat, eccentric... and deaf'. Joseph Wilson, founder of the Lords Day Observance Society would count for more, had he lived in an age of a vigorous press. The Deddington contribution examined in this booklet is witness to a much greater product than the standard description of the place would suggest. Geoffrey Stevenson Oxfordshire's Lost Railways. Peter Dale (card covers, 48pp, illus.). ISBN 1- 84033-312-X. Stenlake Publishing Ltd. 2004. £7.50. This modest paperback contains a succinct introductory history to the county's railways, and is then devoted to some two score photographs about 8" x 6" of trains and stations on lines which have long since disappeared from Oxfordshire, or, in a few cases, such as Fritwell and Somerton, Cropredy and Ardley, to now closed stations on lines which still survive. The first two, incidentally, show clearly, from the distance between the platforms, that Brunel's line from Paddington to Birmingham via Banbury was originally to his 7 foot broad gauge. The captions vary from the informative to the laconic. A helpful preface to each line lists the dates of withdrawal of passenger services and closure of stations. The standard of pictures can however best be described as variable. We fondly imagine that the first decade of the last century was one endless sunny afternoon, and indeed shadows are visible in some of the pictures, but the overall impression is one of greyness. Indeed the reproduction of a rare photograph of Rollright Halt is appalling. 162 .

Load more